Mozilla Gets 'Humanized'

As part of its continuing effort to humanize the Web, open source browser vendor Mozilla is getting some new humans for its development effort.

John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla, confirmed in an e-mailed statement sent to InternetNews.com that Mozilla has hired three of the principals from Humanized, a small user interface development startup.

The president of Humanized is Aza Raskin, who is perhaps best known for being the son of legendary Apple Macintosh UI designer Jef Raskin. Jef Raskin passed away in February of 2005 and was widely credited with being the father of the Apple Macintosh.

Humanized itself is the developer of a number of products including the Enso Launcher, which aims to be an easier way to navigate a desktop. They also have something called Enso Words, which is a universal spell-checker and dictionary application.

Humanized is also working on several beta products, including mapping, translation and Web search technology.

Lilly noted in his statement that the Humanized principals would be joining the Mozilla Labs team effective January 16, 2008.

"We expect a lot of innovation work from them, some Firefox-related, some broader, just like everything else in Mozilla Labs," Lilly said. "This was not an acquisition. No premium was paid and no intellectual property was acquired by Mozilla."

It is not clear what will become of Humanized products or beta efforts as Mozilla did not provide any additional details.

"The work done by the Humanized principals speaks for itself -- there are lots of great, web-relevant ideas in their work and we're excited to have them join Mozilla," Lilly stated.